


There is a Season

by GhostoftheMotif



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, First Kiss, Friendship, Holidays, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:58:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostoftheMotif/pseuds/GhostoftheMotif
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy's life makes a left turn, no signal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There is a Season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Caitriona_3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caitriona_3/gifts).



> My endless love and gratitude go to qualapec, who was the beta for this fic despite being basically the busiest person I know.
> 
> I HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR PRESENT CAITRIONA_3 :D Your prompts were awesome, and I had so much fun writing this <3

HYDRA decides they want Jane in early September.

With a humming tension in the line of her shoulders, Darcy slides behind the wheel of a Mazda belonging to one of Jane’s dead colleagues, and she gets them the hell out of there. The lab is in flames in her rearview mirror, and Jane is stymieing the blood-flow from Erik’s gunshot wound in the backseat. They make eye contact in the reflection, and Darcy feels something inside her turn to steel. Jane is her best friend. These fuckers aren’t going to take her.

HYDRA chases them; Darcy doesn’t let them catch up.

A little over an hour later, while Erik’s in surgery and Darcy’s being gutted by adrenalin in the waiting area, Coulson comes to stand next to her chair. Her head’s in her hands, and she doesn’t look up at him. Every thought in her head is some permutation of a _what if_ : what if she hadn’t been bringing Jane and Erik dinner that night, what if they hadn’t been able to reach the keys that fell out of that murdered doctor’s pockets, what if Darcy had crashed the car, what if _Erik’s surgery wasn’t successful---_

“That was some damn good driving,” he comments. The words are soft, and somehow they don’t disturb the room’s stillness.

“Yeah,” Darcy chokes out.

Her life makes an abrupt left turn, no signal.

\---

Erik survives. Jane returns to work.

Darcy still goes to class, still keeps her eyes on the poli-sci prize.

On the days not devoted to that, she learns how to make her damn good driving _great_.

They don’t make her an agent, officially, but suddenly Darcy understands what the suits are talking about when they describe someone as an asset.

\---

Jane gets a room at Avengers Tower. She’d already been planning to move in with Thor, and now that there’s a steady increase in people who want to kidnap her for nefarious scientific purposes, the Tower makes the most sense. She does groundbreaking things in the labs with Bruce and Tony, dotes on DUM-E, and eats junk food with Darcy while sitting cross-legged on a tabletop.

During the downtime between scheming-villains-who-scheme-schemes, it all kind of feels like a sleep-away camp.

Darcy is in no way complaining. Their lives need some sunshine to balance out the grit.

She visits several times a week, sometimes crashing for the night on a couch so comfortable that she’s pretty sure Tony funded or researched advances in couch technology too. It only takes a month for Darcy to realize that Pepper has been stealthily hoarding every item Darcy leaves behind in an unoccupied room down the hall from Jane’s.

Let it never be said that Darcy can’t take a hint. She loves her bitty apartment, but it just… doesn’t mesh with her life anymore. The other day, there had been a gauge in her palm from one of her SHIELD-sponsored training courses, and she’d gotten blood on her bedroom’s doorframe. That was an image she couldn’t get out of her head, and no amount of curling up with noodles and a slightly itchy, oversized blanket could remove it. It had been like two different transparencies put on a projector, trying to mesh together and flat-out failing. She associates that apartment with a past that’s getting forever farther away from her, and it takes Pepper’s subtle suggestions to make her realize how ready she is for a change.

Darcy moves into Avengers Tower the first week of November. She gets over the weirdness of making hot chocolate in the kitchen with Captain America, she stops jumping when Natasha appears from the shadows with a dryly humorous comment, she teaches Thor to play monopoly, and she watches late-night infomercials with Clint while they guess what mayhem the sounds coming from the labs might entail.

The first night, Darcy stares at the ceiling and says, “Whoa, I’m a badass who lives with super heroes.”

JARVIS asks her if she likes to superfluously state random facts in the evenings.

It absolutely doesn’t scare the crap out of her, and she absolutely does call the AI a smartass.

(But she makes sure JARVIS knows how grateful she is the first time he wakes her up from a nightmare.)

\---

Steve makes the best waffles ever. Darcy and Clint sit at the counter with him while he gets plates ready, discussing the fairest way to divvy up the syrup while trying not to be unraveled by the television set into the wall. Pepper’s at work, Jane and Bruce are consulting on an undisclosed project at an equally undisclosed location, Thor’s representing Asgard at a SHIELD-hosted conference, Natasha’s on a mission they know nothing about, and Tony---

Tony is on the news, fighting a Doombot that had attacked him outside his Malibu office. The footage is live, shaky, raw.

The metal spatula is bending in Steve’s hands as he slides waffles in front of Darcy and Clint.

Darcy sees it, can’t _not_ see it. She finishes her text to Pepper and then says, “Hey.”

Steve glances up at her, head bowed. He’s got that expression he gets he’s worried, that expression that screams _I’m fine, everything’s fine, I’m so earnestly fine_ , but screams it too loud.

Taking her knife and fork into hand, Darcy gets to work. “Ever make a waffle tower before?”

Clint catches on. Their elbows knock together as he reaches for his own utensils. “Bet I can make a taller one than you.”

It’s a syrupy, glorious mess; Clint loses the bet, mostly because he starts eating the architecture.

Tony comes out of the fight bruised but grinning, and Pepper gets home an hour before him. Nobody sees either of them for a while afterwards.

\---

Drones enter into her training regimen during November’s final days, and when a blast bites into her driver-side door, Darcy overcorrects and flips the SUV she’s performing maneuvers in. Each bite of impact is a shock, part of her brain unable to accept the reality while the other braces for a stop, any kind of stop. The car’s messed up, but between the roll cage, her harness, the helmet, and the padding, she’s removed from the vehicle with little more than a ringing in her ears. It’s her first crash since she started, and she can’t seem to quit shaking. Hazily, she remembers that she dented her fender on a god and didn’t feel like this. It’s terrible and free-floating around her too high to swim above. Her instructor gives her breathing room and a bottle of water before leaving to make a call.

Coulson doesn’t take long to get there, and he must have been local and not busy, because Darcy is pretty freaking sure he doesn’t typically have time for things like this. He pulls a chair back at the table and takes a seat.

When he doesn’t say anything, Darcy makes eye contact. She jerks her chin up and says, “Sup?” It’s not as smooth as she’d hoped it would be, but the tenacity is there.

He tilts his head, gives her a lopsided smile. “You tell me.” 

“Well…” she draws out, thinking about it. Her pulse is still pounding, she can hear a constant tone that seems to be doing its damndest to pull her apart, her hands are trembling ripples into the water, and she’s almost one hundred percent certain she’s still panicking. Against all of that, though, is one fact--- a fact that stays solid no matter what’s coming up in waves around it: she’s fucking good at what’s she’s doing, and she wants to keep doing it.

Coulson reads it in her face. “You can’t get back on the course for twenty-four hours after a crash. Would you like to pick back up after your class tomorrow?”

It isn’t hesitation that makes her pause. “I need that time to study for a final. Is Saturday okay?”

The look he gives her perfectly accompanies his, “Of course.”

When he starts to stand, Darcy halts him with, “What am I?” Because she needs to know. “I mean, what’s the paperwork say?”

Coulson takes a few moments to answer. “You’re involved, Ms. Lewis. You are the close friend and confidante of heroes.” _And could become one_ goes unsaid, but she can see the unspoken words in the focus of his eyes. He gestures in direction of the tracks. “You possess an aptitude that could be highly beneficial with the life you lead, and you are honing it into a professional skill.”

“But what’s the paperwork say?” Darcy presses.

“Civilian consultant.”

Under her breath, she mutters, “ _Badass_ civilian consultant.”

Coulson’s eyes are bright. “I won’t argue that.”

\---

Neck’s at the wrong angle, there’s blood on his collar, eyes open, not unconscious

_”Miss Darcy?”_

keys are on the tile floor next to him, Darcy can reach them, she’s just got to get there before the guy down the hall turns and

_”Miss Darcy?”_

sees her and shoots her and recognizes Jane and takes Jane

A sound like a bedside alarm sends Darcy shooting upright, her intake of breath twisting her voice like a shout.

_”I apologize, Miss Darcy.”_ That’s JARVIS, her brain supplies, scrambling for context clues in the dark space: tall windows, a smattering of clothes and paper, her bedroom, Avengers Tower. _“I thought it best to wake you.”_

“No, it’s fine,” she gasps out, raking fingertips over her throat like she could force the air to go down more smoothly. “Thanks, JARVIS.”

When it’s obvious that sleep isn’t happening anymore, she rolls out of bed and goes on a walk.

Avengers Tower is fucking huge, and most of it is still empty. Soft blue light follows her through the halls, and it’s nice to have the constant reminder that she’s never alone. JARVIS is keeping track. She meanders through several floors of empty living quarters, holding a conversation about her classes with the AI and making sincere noises of interest when JARVIS presents some depth her professors hadn’t had time to go into. The talk segues into her study routine, which transitions to her study music, which leads to JARVIS basically showing up Pandora by providing her with an Aimless Wandering playlist.

“You get me,” Darcy tells the empty air around her.

_“I’m happy that you are happy, Miss Darcy.”_

She reaches another elevator and decides to take it down to the training levels. The music follows her. “Hey, what time is it in it Paris? Think Pepper’s awake?”

_”It is currently twelve minutes past six in the morning. I do believe Miss Potts would be up and about.”_

“Awesome.”

Darcy texts her as the elevator descends. Pepper’s getting ready for a meeting, but they commiserate about people who thrive on starting shit, and Darcy laughs for a solid minute when Pepper describes her current host as a bag of hot air on which someone has doodled a walrus mustache.

The elevator doors open as she’s still laughing.

“Wow.”

She jolts back into the present and nearly drops her phone. “Holy crap, Clint! JARVIS, you could have warned me!”

_“Apologies, Miss Darcy.”_ But he doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds the way people sound when they accidentally say a pun and can’t decide whether it’s beautiful or cause for shame.

With a hand pressed over her chest as she gets her breathing to stop trying to split her in two, Darcy grins awkwardly at the SHIELD agent currently sprawled on the practice mat. “So, hi.”

“Hi,” he returns, a good-humored expression on his face.

Just standing there probably isn’t a long-term option, so Darcy walks over to the mat and takes a seat on the edge. Behind her, the elevator doors close off and take her playlist with them. “What were you wow-ing about?”

Good-humored ratchets up to highly-amused. “About twenty seconds ago, this was a silent room. Then the elevators opened and it was like---”

“Bam?” She nods knowingly. “I leave that impression on a lot of places.”

“And people.” Before she can really comment on that or the smile that came with it, Clint continues, “There a specific reason you’re up?”

“Yep. You?”

“Yep.” Something changes behind his eyes. He’d been looking at her the whole time, but suddenly it’s a lot more focused. Darcy’s seen it happen before, but it never stops being kind of startling. It’s like Clint has this switch in his head to make him go from casual to serious without ever changing anything about his posture or facial expression. The only difference is that quality of his eyes, and the guy usually wears shades. “Want to go upstairs and watch stupid infomercials?”

“Yep,” she says simply. Because she knows what that focus means right now. It’s concern. Darcy’s feeling it too.

“Cool.” He shifts to his feet in an easy roll of movement, and then he’s offering a hand to pull her up.

She takes it.

\---

JARVIS ambushes her with study questions at random intervals. It doesn’t seem to matter where she is: walking the halls, hanging out watching television, in the shower, playing sounding board for Jane in the labs, or taking the elevator to another floor. The randomness keeps her on her toes, makes sure that she’s thinking about the material. She reaches the point where she’s constantly mentally prepared for a quiz via disembodied voice. Pepper, back from Paris, keeps her company while she’s actively studying, bringing some of her office work home so they can grouse over it together. They slouch back into the couch cushions and respond to each other’s heavy sighs with the corresponding _you can do it_ sound. 

Steve bakes and brings them random treats in between crowding the other Avengers into a training room for team practice.

Darcy starts wondering how she ever used to study without these people.

\---

When she climbs out of the car after completing a track (singed by the drones but in one piece), Clint is leaning against the warehouse wall. “What up, Hawk Guy?” she calls over to him when she removes her helmet. Her hair is ambitiously attempting to fight gravity. It’s probably a good look on her, but then again, everything’s a good look on her.

“Not much, Dorothy,” he snarks back as he pushes off the metal to join her on the walk inside.

Rolling her eyes, Darcy catches a bottle of water thrown to her by a tech. “Okay, I made a single _not in Kansas anymore_ joke one time when I saw the Science Besties lab.” On either side of them, vehicles are lined up in partitioned slots. Some are bare-bones practice models like the car Darcy just finished with, but others are experimental. Over the past couple of months, Darcy’s gotten the impression that SHIELD has had to consolidate a few of their facilities. A ton of training is done on this site, but there are whole sections of the area that Darcy doesn’t have access. Coulson had waved them away as research-oriented when she asked.

An eyebrow arches above Clint’s shades. “You say that like people need good excuses for nicknames.”

She thinks about that for a moment. “I guess that’s a fair point, Hawk-a-doodle.”

His steps falter, and he glances at her. The thin line of his mouth seems simultaneously amused and horrified. “I will give you ten dollars to never use that in front of Tony.”

“I don’t know…” she says in a conflicted tone.

“He’d order t-shirts, Darcy.” Clint is using his reasoning-with-a-super-villain tone. “There would be novelty mugs.”

“Maybe I want a novelty mug,” she points out.

“I will pay you _twenty_ dollars to not want a novelty mug.”

“So that’s thirty total?”

“No, that’s--- you know what? Yes. Thirty dollars.” He retrieves his wallet, pulls out the appropriate bills, folds them, and slides them into her waiting hand. “Worth it.”

Gravely, she accepts and pockets the cash. “Bless you for your contribution to the New Boots Fund, Hawk n’ Roll.”

“Christ,” he mutters, but there’s a laugh beneath it, so points for Darcy.

She reaches the line of computers set into far wall and starts filing the report of which track she’d driven, the specific vehicle, and any commentary on the experience (minimal damage, course completed). Clint hangs near her. “So…” she ventures. “Whatcha doing out here? I haven’t seen you at this facility before.”

“They wanted me to get a good look at what I’ll be driving on my next mission.” There’s a shrug and another smile. “I saw that you were on the track and thought I’d take the chance to see you in action.”

“And?” she prompts, and it’s weird, but she almost feels kind of nervous even though she knows she’s fantastic.

“And you would tear shit up on the yellow brick road.”

She beams at him. “Why, thank you, Rock-em-Hawk-em.”

\---

She kicks her finals in their collective asses, and then it’s like, oh, hey, the rest of December exists.

It’s the most fun Darcy has ever had hanging up lights for the holidays.

Clint lassos Tony with a string of blue as he flies by, and things devolve in the best way after that. Darcy and Jane are laughing so hard they can’t actually stand up, clinging to one another while making grand promises to not fall from the balcony. Thor hangs close by them just in case.

After he’s freed himself from being dragged places by the cord around Tony’s waist, Clint sticks a perfect landing just in front of them. They clap enthusiastically while he takes a bow, and when he looks up, the lights are reflecting in his eyes, and Darcy thinks _oh_.

Unfortunately, the judicious application of alcohol drowns out that epiphany, and Darcy forgets about it until much later.

\---

Every Sunday, Darcy goes down to the labs in the late afternoon to coax Jane away from her work. Historically, this takes a couple of hours, which means that when they leave, it’s time to meet Pepper and Natasha (and sometimes Maria) for dinner.

Tonight, it’s just Darcy, Jane, and Pepper because Natasha and Maria have been summoned to bash heads together in parts unknown. They have take-out brought up to them because Pepper has been jumping from meeting to meeting at half a dozen different restaurants all day long; the lady’s ready to veg out in front of the TV before she has to fill out some forms and get four hours of sleep. Darcy and Jane are completely behind that decision, and they sit around the coffee table and catch one another up on their respective weeks round robin style. When Pepper finishes describing her final meeting of the afternoon, Darcy decides it’s time for wine and video games--- because Pepper shouts her way through fight sequences, and it’s pretty much the most therapeutically adorable thing ever. Darcy’s utterly unapologetic about introducing Pepper to the outlet of punching people in the face in a virtual world.

While they’re watching, Jane relates a hilarious story of her, Bruce, and Tony messing with each other’s sciencing-playlists, and Darcy’s laughing, but it’s not just about that. It’s about the memory of another playlist and appearing in a burst of vibrant noise through parting elevator doors. She tips sideways against Jane’s shoulder with a Cheshire grin and gets her hair ruffled for it.

\---

On an afternoon when the rest of the team is occupied, Darcy and Natasha hang up the mistletoe. If it is possible to be ambushed by stationary sprigs of leaves, then that is precisely what their work accomplishes. 

Even though she helped rig the aptly-named Nexus of Kissing, Darcy occasionally spaces out enough to be surprised when she comes across a site.

Case in point: she completely forgets about the bit hanging in the elevator.

“Huh,” Clint exhales thoughtfully.

“What…?” Darcy asks, shooting him a curious glance. Then she realizes he’s looking up at the ceiling, and the branch of green leaves suspended above them becomes super obvious. “Oh!” She’d gotten a peck from Bruce earlier, an adorably distracted motion over a cup of tea as he hurried under the sprig in the kitchen to get back to the lab. Once she scrambles over the peak of her surprise, she thinks that adorable is not one of the words she’d use to describe the vibe that rebounds between her and Clint right then. That makes her pause for a sec, because foremost in her thoughts as her brain puts together mistletoe-plus-Clint-equals-Clint-kissing, is an image of him lit up by late-night television, a warm line at her side that grounds her against nightmares being cycled out by loud salesmen and products of varying genius. And that’s, that’s not the simple, giddy fun that she’s always associated with this particular holiday tradition. Well, it _is_ , because Clint is fun, and she likes Clint, and she likes fun, but there are _layers_.

He angles his head towards her a little, clearly evaluating her reaction.

Despite the mystery layers to be rifled through at a later date, it is super easy to settle on how she wants this to go. She gives him a smile that would be most accurately described as jaunty. “Well, Agent Barton?”

That’s apparently all the prompting Clint needs, and it goes exactly how she thought it would go: no hesitation and heaps of contagious humor reflected in his expression. He reaches out, tilts her chin up, and plants one on her. It’s quick, closed-mouthed, warm, and in no way impersonal. Darcy’s eyes are closed, but her eyebrows climb towards her hairline at the sizzle the guy manages to communicate with a brief press of contact.

When he pulls back, his mouth is tugged up in one corner, and he says, “Well, Ms. Lewis?”

“Satisfactory,” she pronounces with a shrug, but she’s holding some cards close to the chest on that one.

Judging from the answering grin, Clint knows it. “Yep.”

\---

She spends the second weekend of December back at her childhood home. Her parents don’t really understand what she’s doing or why she’s doing it, but that has a lot to do with the fact she can’t be completely honest with them. They’re great about it, and have always been great about everything except for that time she was five and used finger paint on their grand piano, but Darcy sees the wrinkles in her dad’s forehead from worry, sees the tapping of her mom’s pointer finger that means the same thing. The whole discussion makes the trip to their house awkward as hell. It does draw attention away from a couple of her cousins, though, and they both looked like they could use it, so Darcy figures that’s just fine. The Lewis clan gathers in the living room of the suburban home and watches as Thor tosses Natasha into the air to land on the back of a scorpion-lizard thing and stab it in the brain.

Darcy texts Nat, _Fucking awesome,_ while her family is still arguing about the game not being showed in favor of the Avengers footage.

“Who are you texting?” her little cousin Matt asks; he’s decided he wants to be a reporter and has taken to questioning the whole family.

“Black Widow,” she answers immediately.

He gives a solemn nod. “My headline is going to be Darcy is a Liar. I need a picture. Hold still.”

She makes the most ridiculous face she can manage and feels accomplished when the six year old falls over laughing.

\---

Mistletoe works in subtle and insidious ways.

She gets back home and finds Clint, Natasha, Tony, and Pepper lounging on the couch and watching epic misunderstandings unfold on a sitcom.

Pre-Mistletoe, Darcy would have piled into that group like it was going out of style, no indecision, just cozy, companionable awesomeness.

Now she’s looking at Clint, and her brain’s exclaiming WHOA, ALERT, ALERT, BACK RIGHT UP. It’s like what happens when two people spend a good bit of time apart, and Person A is like _jeez, Person B’s hair got really long_ , and Person B is like _damn, Person A went and got some muscle_. Except, in her case, it’s _holy crap, I want to kiss the hell out of that smile_ with a generous side-helping of _shit, this isn’t happy-to-see-a-friend happy, is it?_ Darcy freezes in the doorway, blinks some, recovers, and is smiling again in three seconds flat. If anyone notices, she doesn’t see an indication of it.

The thing is, Darcy knows exactly what’s happened. She’s had enough crushes in her lifetime to recognize them without the denial or dismissal stage. This is different, though, and she knows it--- because this was a slow progression. This was a thousand little things that illustrated friendship until the precise moment it didn’t. It’s one of those pictures that’s different depending on which way it’s held up.

Clint shifts, sees her, and grins.

“Yep,” Darcy mutters to herself.

Her perception’s definitely been turned upside down (which, in true keeping with her life, might turn out to be the right way up).

\---

It’s the third week of December, and she’s just gotten on the bus that will drop her near the pick-up point for transport to the track when Coulson calls her cell.

“Get off the bus at its next stop. Don’t finish your route.” His voice is calm, but there’s something underneath it. In the background, she can hear a sound like sharply demarcated static.

Chills dart up Darcy’s arms, and she knows what’s happened, feels cold settle into her chest. She removes her iPod’s remaining ear-bud. The conversation of the other passengers gets filtered out as white noise. “How bad?” It’s like listening to herself speak from behind a thick wall, but she’s already pushing a book and notepad back into her bag.

“Still under evaluation,” he answers pleasantly.

“Are you…” _okay, hurt, trapped?_ The facility had the personnel and security to defend itself in theory, but a majority of the people she’d spoken to could speak from experience ---hell, so could she--- of the potential for that to be surmounted. 

A pause, and then, “I’m afraid I must hang up, Ms. Lewis.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “Take care of yourself, all right? I’ll talk to you soon.”

“The same to you.” And then he’s gone, either to raise a gun, or to move further down a list of calls to make, or both.

When she exits the bus, Natasha is there waiting for her. Numbly, Darcy links their arms together and grips the leather of Natasha’s jacket with one hand while clenching the other at her side. They walk in silence, and Darcy uses the sound of life as an anchor to quiet the rushing-water noise of her pulse. A Stark car is waiting for them two streets over. It pulls into the flow of traffic once they’ve filed in.

With her forehead pressed to the cool surface of the window, Darcy breathes out a slow breath, because she’s just come to terms with something: she’s on the right path to accomplish what she wants to do with her life, but she’s got a long hike ahead. She’s not there yet. It’s only been three months. “I want to learn some self defense. Can you teach me?”

From the corner of her eye, she sees Natasha turn a fraction to study her. It’s a precise, intent look that gives Darcy the impression she’s being assessed. A weighted moment later, Natasha says, “Yes.”

Everyone stays up together that night.

They get a call from Maria, fed into the room by JARVIS, at half past midnight. The faction that had attacked the SHIELD facility was made up of rogue agents, a group of individuals collected by a fledging organization based in Illinois. Maria assures them that “fledging” has been modified to “cleaned out”. There were some details that she couldn’t give them ---what they were after, for instance--- but she passes on a message from Coulson: he’d taken care of himself, and now he had to take care of a debriefing.

As the call ends, Darcy lets out a sighed sound of relief, sinking back against the couch where she’s wedged between Clint and Jane.

Thor clapping a hand on Tony’s shoulder brings her back into focus. “You appear troubled, my friend.”

Whatever reverie the guy had slipped into, he starts at the contact. “What?” Tony plasters on a grin to compensate. It isn’t convincing; they know him too well. “Nothing.”

Pepper’s lips thin, and she reaches up to touch Tony’s arm where he’s standing beside her chair. “Tony.”

His grin falls away, increment by increment . “It’s… not really something we can change. Facts of life.”

“Well, point them out to us anyway,” Steve suggests, careful.

Darcy doesn’t miss what Tony does next: he makes eye contact with Natasha, and when she gives a slight nod, he sighs jaggedly. Whatever conclusion he’s drawn, Darcy realizes Natasha’s did too.

“Okay, well…” he begins.

“It was a mission of theft from a research warehouse, and they didn’t call us in,” Bruce finishes.

“Oh, go ahead, steal my thunder. Thought that was Thor’s job,” Tony chastises cheerily, but his smile is small, grim. “But yeah. It’s right in our backyard, and we could have wrapped it up in a lot less than six hours.” He rubs at the back of his neck, an anxious gesture. “They didn’t call us in because they didn’t want us involved, didn’t want us to see whatever it was.”

“Countermeasures,” Natasha agrees, expression unchanging.

That seeps into the air around them. Darcy glances between the others. No one looks surprised. She catches the resigned tilt of Thor’s head, and that’s when she gets it. It’s a readily accepted staple that people change, and these people? These people are super heroes. If they were to go in a different direction, then SHIELD would need a way to neutralize them. That’s part of SHIELD’s job. But the problem with that, and the current root of Darcy’s unease, is that once those _countermeasures_ exist, the potential for them to be weaponized for offense instead of defense exist too.

“Like I said,” Tony continues eventually. “Facts of life.”

Steve lets out a loud sigh and gets to his feet. When he notices questioning looks directed towards him, he says, “We need cake,” and presumably heads to the kitchen to retrieve some.

\---

It’s 3:38 AM; she can’t sleep.

She texts him, _You awake?_

Clint replies fifteen seconds later with, _Infomercials?_

_Yep_ , she sends back, and she pockets her phone, rolls out of bed, and leaves to meet him.

\---

Darcy is sitting in the lab while Tony, Bruce, and Jane banter and toss glowing spheres of data to each other across the space. It’s like watching a scholarly game of racquetball, and it’s one of the most entertaining spectacles she’s ever seen. JARVIS pumps out one of Tony’s playlists through the speakers, and every so often, they all take a moment to belt out a chorus. Darcy nods her head to the beat, studying the tablet in her hands. There’s a mound of material that Coulson has sent her to study while the track is being repaired. Darcy’s still not sure how she feels about the countermeasures thing, but everyone else has continued on with business-as-usual, and she trusts their judgment. As chaotic and extreme as their lives are, they should expect the occasional mess of confusion. She’s just got to take it a day at a time and figure it out as she goes.

A soft whirring sound comes to her attention, barely audible above the music, and Darcy smiles down at DUM-E, who has come to a stop at her side. There’s a sparkly gold ornament fastened to the robot’s arm.

He dumps a pile of arrows in her lap before moving away at what Darcy interprets to be a happy roll.

“What,” is about all Darcy can think to say about that.

Tony turns in her direction at the word and pauses mid-sentence with a contemplative expression. “Huh.”

Before Darcy can even think of how to phrase the myriad of _whys_ and _whats_ occurring to her in that moment, she hears the elevators open over her shoulder.

“Hey, guys,” Clint greets them as he enters the room. The volume of the music lowers marginally. “JARVIS said my new batch of arrows is ready?”

“Yeah…” Tony answers slowly, and Darcy knows that look. It’s the look he gets when he’s on the verge of putting some stubborn puzzle pieces together. “They’re, uh. Darcy’s got them.”

“Cool.” He has that enthusiastic glint in his eyes that Darcy associates with him obtaining something new to shoot. The steps he takes towards her are freaking _merry_ , and she’d make a joke about a kid at Christmas, but it was almost too literal to be funny: the holiday was only five days away.

Darcy gathers the arrows into her hands and their fingers brush when he takes them. He considers the set for a moment and then lifts his eyes to hers, and the blue glow of a data ball lights up his face as it soars past on its way to Jane. Abruptly, she remembers--- she remembers the night hanging the lights, she remembers when she’d looked at Clint and realized how she felt the _first_ time. She goes through it all over again.

She wonders who has been teaching DUM-E about Cupid, because this is getting ridiculous.

“Have fun,” she tells him brightly.

He shoots her a wink. Goddammit, she is going to go for this. “Yep.”

\---

She’s hit the mat so many times that she’s pretty sure it would miss her terribly if she left. Darcy groans, pushes with her palms, and rights herself.

“Better,” Natasha comments, offering a hand with her sharp smile and sharper eyes. 

Darcy takes it. Her abs hurt, but hey, she’s getting _abs_. She comes up grinning. “Did I look less like a dying fish when I fell that time?”

“Definitely!” Jane calls over from the sideline, exuding optimism with two thumbs up.

Natasha gives her a meaningful look and makes a see-saw gesture.

“Oh, thanks,” Darcy laughs, out of breath.

It earns a wider smile that shows Natasha’s teeth in a fond, non-threatening way. “Again?”

“Hey.” Darcy spreads her arms in a _bring it_ gesture. “I’m not quitting until I hit that mat like a graceful goddamn swan.”

Two and a half hours of educational exhaustion later, they’re leaving the ring together with vague designs on lunch. Clint’s in the elevator when it opens. The three of them file in with him, and Darcy is so not imagining Natasha arching an eyebrow at the guy. They totally have a secret eyebrow language, and one day Darcy is going to crack that code. Darcy shifts a little to give Jane a narrow glance, because Clint and Natasha didn’t corner the market on cryptic bestie signals.

Whatever the eyebrows said, it results in Clint joining them at lunch. He sits across from Darcy at the restaurant, lifting his feet to rest on the booth beside her. No one in the group talks about good movies; they talk about _terrible_ ones, the crème de la crap, and it’s fun, it’s spirited, and it’s easy. Darcy’s eyes are repetitively drawn to Clint’s face, and nearly every time, they connect with his. It isn’t hard to put together that this isn’t a case of two people glancing over and missing each other; they’re both getting caught.

“So, I saw they have you down for getting a pilot’s license,” Clint says as they’re leaving. A couple of people near the door seem like they might recognize them, but they don’t do anything about it. 

“They sure do,” Darcy confirms. Arms knocking together, they continue on down the sidewalk with Jane and Natasha following at a slower pace. If she knows them the way she thinks she does, it’s on purpose. “I am destined to be a key figure in SHIELD’s great escapes in years to come.” And she has the potential to be constantly at hand too, with the focusing of her political science goals. She has the smarts, she has the personality, and post-Thunder-God, she also has the contacts. With SHIELD’s training, she’s going to be a great pair of eyes, and she was already a great voice before she ever knew what SHIELD was.

She’s going to understand situations from a plethora of different angles, and when necessary, she’s going to remove people from those situations.

“I’ve got a plane,” Clint says, and it’s casual, confident, a simple statement.

“Yep,” Darcy replies, also casual, also confident, also a simple statement.

Clint cracks a smile. “Would you like to learn with my plane?”

“I don’t know,” Darcy drawls. “Is the plane’s owner part of the package?”

He shrugs. “Someone’s got to do the teaching. I hear that guy’s a badass.”

“That’s true. It’s also true that badass is a guy I’d like to go on a date with.”

“There’s a possibility that guy’s hoping the flying lessons will take on a distinct, date-like vibe.”

“There’s a possibility I’m completely open to that.”

“There’s a possibility I might be sick,” Natasha interjects from behind them.

Clint pauses.

“Is there a possibility that guy didn’t know Natasha was standing there?” Darcy asks sympathetically.

Right then, on a New York City sidewalk, with the sun beating down and cars angrily going nowhere, Clint grins, and he’s wearing shades, but Darcy _knows_ it reaches his eyes.

And that… that means a lot, because the Clint that the world sees isn’t the Clint that his friends see. It says a whole hell of a lot that she can tell the difference between Clint when he’s sincere and Clint when his expressions amount to muscle memory. Darcy has thought of herself and Clint as close for a while, but that’s the first instant she’s consciously aware of the family she’s entered into.

That evening, when they’ve returned to the lab, Darcy asks Jane, “Do you ever look at our lives and think: how the fuck?”

Jane blinks at Darcy through a transparent screen of data before she nods emphatically. “Oh, god yes.” Then she smiles. “Couldn’t have happened to a cooler pair of ladies, though, right?”

With a smirk, Darcy reclines backwards on the table, hair fanning out around her. “Yep.”

\---

For Christmas, Clint gets her the fondue set from the infomercial that never fails to make her mouth water and cause her to gesticulate wildly at the television screen.

They laugh themselves hoarse when she unwraps it, and Darcy knows ---fucking _knows_ \--- that the new year is going to be fantastic.


End file.
